Pluto and Illinois

Lilly finished first grade today. It was a short day for her elementary school, some kind of assembly in the morning, and that was that. I except she won’t remember much about the day, if my experience with the end of first grade is any guide. I don’t even think anything like an assembly marked the occasion. The bell rang and that was that.

One more item from our excursion last weekend. I wanted an alternative to the Interstate for part of the return, so after retracing our route up Illinois 26 to near Henry, we then headed east on Illinois 18. We’d had lunch in Henry the day before, on the porch of a small restaurant called Nan’s, served by pleasant waitress who had just started waiting on tables the day before, she said. Sure enough, there were a few mix-ups, nothing serious, and eventually we got our decent road food. Down the street, we stopped at a yard sale, and Lilly scored two Bratz dolls for $2, both in good shape. For her, this was like finding a couple of real gold nuggets for sale by people who thought they were iron pyrite.

Illinois 18 took us exclusively through flatlands, once the Illinois River valley was behind us, and on to Streator. Streator’s one of those towns that the Interstate system has completely bypassed. It didn’t seem any worse for it, though, with all the usual features of rural Illinois county seats: a small downtown, a district of fine-trim houses, a trailer park or two, parks, schools, a police station, firehouse, and library with a historic marker out front dedicated to the discoverer of Pluto.

I saw a sign that pointed to that sign: something along the lines of Historic Marker: Discovery of Pluto: This Way. I had to see that marker, which, as I mentioned, was planted in front of the town library. I knew, of course, that Pluto had been discovered in Flagstaff, Arizona, by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. How Streator figured into that, I didn’t know.

Turns out that Tombaugh was born near Streator, and attended the local high school before moving with his family to Kansas. Later he made his way to the Lowell Observatory on Mars Hill -- a museum now, well worth visiting if you’re in northern Arizona. I didn’t know Tombaugh was a native Illinoisan. Like Ronald Reagan, he found fame elsewhere, but his hometown hasn’t forgotten.